Insights into Social and Institutional Innovations for Enhancing Energy Decentralisation and Climate Change Mitigation in Developing Countries

Dumisani Chirambo

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) require state and non-state actors to reduce the vulnerability of communities to climate related extreme events, and other economic, social and environmental shocks; and for universal access to modern energy by 2030. Achieving this will require implementing new radical approaches to accelerate decen¬tralised energy services provision. Through an analysis of data from various research articles, policy briefs and project reports, the paper discovered that polycentric governance systems can enhance Africa’s renewable energy institutional capacity and create new social systems to facilitate successful climate change mitigation and energy transitions for universal energy access. Moreover, despite the presence on various climate finance mechanisms to promote transitions towards low carbon development, in the absence of restrictive supply-side policy instruments targeting fossil fuels, Africa will be locked-in fossil fuel energy supply systems rather than directly leapfrogging from little or no energy infrastructure directly to low carbon energy supply systems.